|
Back to list of Dissenting
Opinions of Judges
 November
24, 2004 - The North Shore News (CN BC)
OPED: Policy Of Prohibition A Failure
By Judge J.B. Paradis
I was appointed to the provincial court of British Columbia
on Feb. 15, 1975.
I retired on Aug. 13, 2003.
During those 28 years, I presided over at least 1,000 cases,
some big, most small, involving the possession or sale of illegal
drugs.
Bail hearings, trials, guilty pleas, applications to forfeit
property - I took notes on each one.
And a scan of those notes makes it clear that nothing much
has changed: the same number of people are still choosing to
ingest mood-altering substances, the same proportion are addicted
and there is the same persistent, but increasingly lucrative
and efficient system of supply.
Over those years we - citizens, police, judges - lived and
worked within the orthodoxy that all drugs are inherently evil
(except, of course, alcohol) and that prohibition and punishment
can rid us of them.
How wrong we were.
So wrong, it is distressing to consider the evils we spawned
in our hopeless attempt to impose criminal sanctions for private
choices.
The inclination in humans, other mammals, birds and even some
insects to seek out mind-altering substances is innate. Leaving
aside the substantial research on the subject, any observant
person can see the enduring popularity of everything from coffee
and tobacco to alcohol and ecstasy. There is, always was and
always will be a demand for such substances and, therefore, there
will always be a supply.
Which is not to suggest that drugs are harmless. In fact,
it is their very potential for harm that, more than anything
else, highlights the abject failure of the policy of prohibition.
But almost all present-day non-medical drugs, properly regulated
and taken with care, can provide a respite from the toil, strife
and illness that life inevitably serves up, whether you are a
Kurdish goat-herder smoking hashish or a Vancouver school teacher
sipping a scotch.
We have already conceded that much in our acceptance of alcohol,
a serious intoxicant we can consume without being criminals but
which we recognize as dangerous when not consumed in moderation
or consumed by those too young to deal with its effects.
In the face of that innate desire, prohibition becomes nothing
more than an irresistible force butting up against an immovable
object.
Incredible as it may seem, there are no up-to-date reliable
statistics on illegal drug use in Canada, although the Canadian
Centre on Substance Abuse will be releasing this month the results
of its first comprehensive survey since 1994.
There are two other options available to determine if the
policy of prohibition has had any impact during its almost century-old
lifetime: American information and statistics on drug crimes
in British Columbia.
The Americans are far more rabid in their approach to drugs
so it would be reasonable to assume that drug consumption there
has fallen. Not so. From the mid-1960s to 2002, marijuana and
cocaine use among 18- to 25-year-olds increased from five per
cent to 54 per cent and from one per cent to 15.4 per cent, respectively.
That growth has taken place not only in the face of the threat
of serious jail time for possession of even small amounts and
"three-strikes" laws, but also in spite of draconian
laws in a number of states that prohibit the drug convict, upon
release, from collecting welfare, living in public housing, receiving
food assistance, obtaining a driver's licence, securing student
loans or applying for a job with any government department or
agency.
The B.C. drug crime rate is no more encouraging to the drug
warriors. Between 1993 and 2002, the incidence of cannabis and
cocaine convictions rose 66 per cent and 48 per cent respectively
with no significant increase in policing and prosecution efforts.
Government has a legitimate role in the regulation of recreational
drugs because they are potentially poisonous substances. Only
the purest free-marketer would advocate an unregulated market.
The LeDain Report of 1973, still one of the most careful, thorough,
balanced and well-written explorations of modern non-medical
drug use, contains a sort of cost-benefit analysis of the various
options for the regulation of drugs. It concludes that prohibition
is one of the least desirable approaches.
Recognizing that drug use "is too deeply rooted and too
pervasive to be eliminated entirely," the report identifies
four good reasons not to resort to prohibition.
First, it creates an illicit market, an irresistible playing
field for serious criminals.
Furthermore, all those offences that are reported as "drug-related"
are nothing of the kind. They are prohibition-related. A black
market grossly inflates the price of drugs, forcing the addict
into petty crime to pay for his drugs. We never read that an
alcoholic has broken into someone's home to get what he needs,
because he buys his addictive substance in a regulated market
at a reasonable price. And, except for alcohol (a substance at
the root of well greater than half of all criminal charges),
offences committed because of the influence of a drug are as
rare as asteroid hits.
Second, it inhibits any efforts to seek help or treatment
when consumption gets out of hand and it constrains the creation
of resources for those purposes.
Third, it inhibits education about the dangers of drugs. If
the law prohibits them outright, it is difficult to discuss them,
particularly with teenagers, in the context of a wise exercise
of freedom of choice.
Finally, prohibition places a disproportionate demand on law-enforcement
resources. By 2001, policing drugs in Canada (just drugs themselves,
not "drug-related" offences) cost $500 million a year,
an amount that significantly exceeded the amount, over the same
period of time, spent on the vilified gun-registry program -and
with apparently as little bang for the taxpayer's buck.
Add to those unfortunate results the demonizing of citizens
whose only sin is to become addicted to the wrong drug, as well
as the corruption of enforcement officials and the erosion of
civil liberties that inevitably creep into investigation of victimless
crimes, and the picture is truly dismal.
But the most telling consequence has been the inevitable unreliability,
in a black market, of the quality and strength of the product
- or its outright misidentification - and the resulting threat
of serious illness or death from overdose, let alone the spread
of AIDS and hepatitis from needle re-use.
In other words, if the regulation of poisons is a reasonable
pursuit of government, one which justifies a policy in the first
place, prohibition has enhanced, not diminished, the poisonous
potential of street drugs.
The federal government has said repeatedly over the past two
decades that misuse of drugs is a health issue. It is past time
that it acted accordingly, shelved its costly and useless policy
of prohibition and created a rational structure to deal with
all non-medical drug use, the one presently in use for alcohol:
a system of regulated distribution. At a stroke, we would destroy
the black market, remove a principal source of revenue for organized
crime and terrorist groups, free up hundreds of millions of dollars
now spent on enforcement and corrections, create a new source
of government revenue - to be devoted to drug treatment and education
- and greatly reduce the incidence of property crime.
Only two things stand in its way. The first is the Law of
Natural Inertia of Governing Bodies: if a policy would be bold,
socially beneficial and fiscally prudent, but risky with the
electorate and requiring the overhaul of entrenched structures,
study it some more. The second is the anticipated response from
our neighbours to the south.
Neither can justify persisting in such a demonstrable failure.
Back to list of Dissenting
Opinions of Judges
Back to the top
If you have a dissenting opinion of a Federal or State Judge,
please mail or e-mail a copy to:
November Coalition
282 West Astor
Colville, WA 99114
(509) 684-1550
editor@november.org
|
